Pancreatic cancer treated in mice by loading tumour cells with tetanus

The best of Voices delivered to your inbox every week - from controversial columns to expert analysis Sign up for our free weekly Voices newsletter for expert opinion and columns Sign up to our free weekly Voices newsletter Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. A team of scientists at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York released new findings showing that listeria bacteria, known to be naturally attracted to tumours, can selectively deliver inactivated forms of tetanus toxins to pancreatic cancer tumours in mice, subsequently causing the activation of cancer-killing immune response T-cells within the tumour. This means pancreatic cancer cells loaded with tetanus should be visible to the immune system and are therefore vulnerable to the immune system’s attack, the researchers said. Essentially, our new therapy makes immunologically ‘cold’ tumors hot enough for the immune system to attack and destroy them.” Researchers gave tetanus vaccines to young mice specimens that were specially engineered to develop pancreatic cancer as they age to test the treatment. This means that only those Listeria bacteria in the tumor region survive long enough to infect pancreatic tumor cells and that healthy cells don’t become infected.” The study published in Science Translational Medicine found that mice treated with the tetanus vaccines reduced tumour size by 80 per cent and reduced cancer spread by 87 per cent resulting in a 40 per cent survival rate compared to non-treated mice.